Reading Round-Up: February 2023

Jaclyn

Mar 15

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby. I literally can't remember a time in my life when I didn't love to curl up with a good book. Here are my reads for February, 2023.

Scott's Last Expedition, by Captain Robert Falcon Scott - This one has been on my shelf for years, waiting for its day. I finally picked up Captain Scott's diaries detailing his doomed final expedition to the South Pole shortly before leaving for my own trip to Antarctica (which, thankfully - and as expected - went much better than Scott's). I bogged down in quite a few places (especially the endless descriptions of weather conditions, which were certainly top of mind for Scott but which didn't exactly hold the attention) and spent a fair amount of time lamenting Scott's poor decision-making - especially those bad decisions that led directly to his death and the deaths of the rest of the members of his Polar Party. But it was an interesting and important read on the history of polar exploration.

Three Letters from the Andes, by Patrick Leigh Fermor - As I thought, this book focused entirely on Peru - so not the part of the Andes I was destined to see at the southern tip of Argentina. But as with everything written by Fermor, it was a beautiful and evocative read. And Peru is quite high on Steve's and my list of countries to visit soon (with the kids) so I'm sure I will be revisiting this slim but lovely volume.

Object Lessons: Whale Song, by Margret Grebowicz - An interesting, again slim, look at the sounds whales make, their communication, and what those phenomena mean to human culture. This left me with a lot of food for though, especially about the tendency to anthropomorphize cetaceans.

A Nature Poem for Every Winter Evening, ed. Jane McMorland Hunter - I really enjoyed Jane McMorland Hunter's selections in A Nature Poem for Every Night of the Year, which I read a few years ago, and was delighted that she is now curating seasonal selections (in pretty hardcovers that are a bit easier to hold and read than the giant doorstopper omnibus, too). I bookmarked quite a few poems to revisit, and this volume contained some old and some new favorites. I have the spring volume sitting on my coffee table and can't wait to dive in.

Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, by Sara Wheeler - One thing about polar literature, and the literature of Antarctica especially, is that it's very heavily male-dominated. Looking for a woman's voice to take on my Antarctic journey, I found Sara Wheeler's memoir of her time spent "on the ice" - a memoir the great Beryl Bainbridge describes as "essential" - and Wheeler was the perfect company for the long flights and days on the Drake Passage. I loved her description of her initial preconceptions of Antarctica as "the place where men with frozen beards competed to see how dead they could get" and her wise and funny observations of her companions at McMurdo Station and the other research stations and camps she visited over multiple trips to the icy continent. Funnily enough, Steve and I hit it off with another couple in our kayak group while on our trip, and they were both reading Terra Incognita too. We all agreed - it's a wonderful read.

Well! This is a short list - only five books - as I was too busy having the adventure of a lifetime in Antarctica to do much reading. (Even during the long at-sea days on the Drake, I spent most of my time watching albatrosses swoop behind the ship and looking for whale spouts on the horizon.) But it was a good month of reading in that everything I did manage to read was interesting and enjoyable (or some combination!). Terra Incognita was the highlight of the month, for sure. Now that I'm home, I'm taking a break from ice and men with frozen beards and turning my attention to some springier reading. I'm definitely feeling the pull to my shelves again - I never read much when I am traveling - and looking forward to a longer booklist for March.

What were your reading highlights in February?

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